With engineering I view this year's failure as next year's opportunity to try it again. Failures are not something to be avoided. You want to have them happen as quickly as you can so you can make progress rapidly.
In the revolt against idealism the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.
The equality that we are all entitled to as citizens of this democracy can't be avoided by some religious dogma of a President who's is supposed to believe in the notion of separation of church and state. And he frankly doesn't.